


heart stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic

by calerine



Series: WEST drabbles [1]
Category: Johnny's WEST
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-27
Updated: 2015-12-27
Packaged: 2018-05-09 18:05:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5550158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calerine/pseuds/calerine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A bunch of drabbles I wrote for friends/fun.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> post orgasm WEST (minus shige & junta)

They’re always sappy after orgasm, lethargic and boneless in the afterglows of their pleasure, like Akito now, grinning with all his teeth as he places a loud smacking kiss on Kamiyama’s cheek now.

“You’re always so cheesy and useless after sex,” Kamiyama complains, even though his heart near bursting with fondness for Hamada and Akito, and their arms around his shoulders. The drying sweat on their bodies make them stick to his sides, like those brother chimps he’d seen at the Osaka zoo once. He’s still breathing hard, fast - perhaps it’s still from his orgasm, or perhaps it’s from watching Ryusei slide his cock between Kotaki’s thighs on his hands and knees. Colour is high on their cheeks.

Akito grins at Kamiyama, quick and playful and in that moment, he feels relief wash over him. It’s been a long series of weeks for all of them. Entire days crammed full with appearances on radio shows and early morning news programmes, with words that have turned old and worn under incessant repetitions. Most of all for Akito, Kotaki and Ryusei, who every time he sets eyes on them, appear more and more exhausted, as if they’ve become stretched out thin between one long shinkansen ride and another night under starched hotel sheets. But here, like this, at least Kamiyama can hold on to them, soothe their whimpers with his tongue and make sure their sleep is dreamless.

Hamada combs his fingers through Kamiyama’s hair, taking his time to press gently at the tendons behind his ears. The contact makes Kamiyama sigh, his shoulders dropping.

“Speak for yourself,” Hamada comments, punctuating it with a gentle press of his lips on the sharp angle of Kamiyama’s cheekbones, and he can feel the fond smile in it.

“I’m supposed to be the mum here,” Kamiyama gripes, or tries to. He knows he’s failed when Kotaki situates himself bodily between Akito and himself, sending Akito flailing and grumbling into Ryusei’s arms.

“Keep trying,” Kotaki murmurs, no bite in his voice as he noses at Kamiyama’s jaw and tugs on his arm, whining until he wraps it around his shoulders.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ot7, G: post-tandem-cycling, they regroup and recuperate. (this happens in the same verse as [this](http://beertoface.livejournal.com/11853.html).)

Kotaki’s fingertips press into Ryusei’s calves, lingering at sore spots that make him groan and whimper at the reminder that he’ll probably wake up aching the next day. Across the sea of futons, Shige’s given up giving Akito a massage. Instead, he’s tugging Akito’s spectacles from the bridge of his nose with a quick kiss against the corner of his lips that makes them crook upwards slightly. Then he wriggles under the blanket too, settling with his back against Akito chest, making a quiet pleased sound and threading their fingers together so he can pull Akito’s arms around himself.

This evening, they’d gradually filed back to their apartment after respective filming jobs. First Junta and Kamiyama; they’d pulled out all their futons from the closet and laid them out in their empty living room at the prospect of all seven of them in Tokyo at the same time. Then it was Hamada, Ryusei and Akito, followed by Shige and Kotaki who then made Junta call for takeaway. They’d sat eating sticky sweet potato glass noodles that clumped around their chopsticks as the evening news gave way slowly to racier content, Ryusei’s eyes drooped slowly close and Akito started leaning heavier against Hamada’s side.

“I’m not looking forward to our turns,” Junta says, a pillow propped between his lower back and the wall. His iPad is cradled in his lap, screen filled with too many words that Hamada doesn’t even want to bother. The television’s switched to some late-night Tokyo talk show, polite studio audience laughter interspersed with a lightly veiled comment about sex. Occasionally, Hamada finds Kotaki watching, the purpose of his hands turning distracted and soft. Ryusei tucks his face into the nook of Kotaki’s throat, fingers in his worn MEMBER shirt from the concerts earlier in the year. He’s breathing slow, too tired to move but just alert enough not to fall asleep like this.

“You’ve already completed the Osaka marathon two years in a row, you’ll be fine,” Hamada says without thinking, and Junta shrugs noncommittally. “Anyway, I’ll be there, or Kami-chan. We’ll make sure you don’t die halfway.”

Kamiyama turns at his name. It takes him a moment to get his bearings from the flickering TV screen. “Huh?” He lets out. A glance at Kotaki and Ryusei makes him purse his lips. “You two need to go to bed. Now,” he adds when Kotaki makes a face.

He watches them extract themselves from that tangle of limbs with a bleariness that has been exacerbated by this past midnight hour, Kotaki tapping on the side of Ryusei’s neck until he peels himself away and under his futon. Then Kotaki follows, wrapping his limbs around Ryusei’s torso after he’s found a good spot.

“I was saying,” Hamada repeats, softer now that they’re all winding down. The show has ended, segue-wayed into some commercials. Junta pulls his knees to his chest and his iPad slides down to his hips. “Neither of us will let Junta die on a tandem bicycle.”

“Of course not!” Kamiyama promises, like the fact it was ever questioned in the first place is a dent on his honour. “Johnny’s WEST can’t continue with just six of us can it.”

“Yeah,” Hamada agrees with great aplomb, ducking his head sheepishly when Kotaki makes a loud shushing noise from under his mound of blankets.

Junta hums thoughtfully. “I guess,” he concedes, shrugging. The light of the television flickers shadows across his face, but Hamada still hears the smile in his voice.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> akito/hama, PG: grad student AU
> 
> For [lysanderpuck](http://lysanderpuck.livejournal.com/).

The first day of class and despite multiple recitals in the comfort of his own head, Hamada fumbles through his self-introduction with a fluster that hides absolutely none of his anxiety. _Fake it till you make it_ goes right through the window, so does his English. He ends with a strangled croak in Kansai-ben, startling some of the proper European students, he’s sure.

He bows his head in shame for the rest of the session, burning with humiliation and the desperation to leave immediately. But when he finally looks up, pass the circle of students - blond hair, dark skin and proficiencies Hamada can’t reach - he finds another Japanese face on the fringes, meets his eyes in an accidental moment of happenstance.

For a moment, the guy looks surprised, then he flashes him double thumb-ups and a grin so blinding Hamada’s convinced momentarily of the existence of angels.

//

Second week and Hamada finds himself pacing sidewalks two streets from the dorms, lost.

“I can’t find - do you know -” Hamada starts, stops, and grapples around for the right words before he finds that a familiar face’s staring back at him.

“The Asian supermarket right? I had trouble finding it when I first got here too, Junta-kun in 204 drew a map for me and everything, but between you and me, he’s really not very good at drawing - don’t tell him I said that. It’s here, you’re actually not far off. Look, I’m heading that way too -” and Hamada found himself following already, falling into effortless step to the beat of the effortless rhythm of his own tongue.

He picks up curry and rice, hesitates at the carrots that Kiriyama brings over afterwards, and accepts when he finally bargains _if you share the curry, you can have them for free._

//

His sister calls it a date when he tells her, but Hamada just laughs at her and hears his own voice echoed back at him, broken up and scattered from almost six thousand miles away.

They meet the Overseas Japanese Student Association for drinks, then give up on the restaurant Shige gave Akito those free coupons for. Instead they walk back to the dorms in the slush of yesterday’s snow, toes getting wet through their shoes.

“Try it,” Akito encourages afterwards, when his feet are submerged in a warm footbath that Hamada’s now adept at making. For shits and giggles, Hamada pulls up one of his cheap plastic chairs until the legs bump into the bucket and sticks his feet in the water too. They barely fit; Akito has to push the soles of his feet against the sides.

Akito watches him expectantly, waiting until they make eye contact and he bursts into laughter. “See,” he says. “I was right. Anyway, this way, the water’ll stay warmer for longer.”

“You’re such a stereotype of a broke grad student,” Hamada tells him, but it only makes him laugh louder.

//

Akito’s writing his paper on post-war Japanese literature, and Hamada’s pretty sure his sister was right.

He spends two nights trying and failing to concentrate on getting a segment of his dissertation in order. He doesn’t see Akito at all and his stomach feels weird by the end of day two, even after he’s _had_ vegetables and beef for dinner, not just some rice and eggs as he is wont to. It shouldn’t be this tricky. After all they’re both adults. They’ve had practice with other people in the discomfort of push and pull; they don’t have to resort to this game of tag, this circular waltz that Hamada’s never really gotten the hang of.

Or at least, Hamada imagines it should be.

Yet, here they are spending entire days side-by-side at the uni library cafe, leeching off on electricity and wifi, then walking back together in the chilly drizzle of London in winter, hands curled around stacks of paper and their laptops.

The tension that futzes in the air is _probably_ not from the static electricity of their wool gloves brushing.

//

In the end, it’s a mistake that makes it happen which is for them on par for the course.

They have a little more than a year left before their deadlines.

These days, Akito is always writing and reading, always one foot in their world and one foot in someone else’s. There’s a giant list over his bed even - taped to the uneven wall despite the dormitory’s No Tape policy - of seventy-six titles that Akito has to get through. Over half of them have been crossed out. On rainy overcast afternoons, he only raises his head from his book at the turn of the doorknob, eyes taking a moment to focus on Hamada’s face. Then, he just offers a grin and leaves Hamada to make his own tea and find his own seat at the base of Akito’s bed.

“You’re always reading,” Hamada says on a Friday afternoon, trying for a statement and finding a claim?

Akito studies him for a moment over his e-reader, then launches himself across Hamada’s crossed legs with his reading glasses still on. The heat of a blush rises up Hamada’s chest and touches his neck. “What would you rather we do instead?”

“You need to get out more, go for a run or -” Hamada replies, instead of whatever else was crowding up in his throat. Then all of a sudden, it’s reached the backs of his teeth, and like a gag reflex, he spits out, “or you could go out with me.”

Akito gapes. Hamada feels as surprised as he looks. He’s ready to apologise but then, Akito’s grinning, so bright that Hamada has to stop wrestling with shock for a moment.

“Make up your mind, Hamada,” Akito says, faux-chidingly, but he immediately leaps to his feet and tugs Hamada up with him. “Which do you want?”

Hamada still feels like he’s two steps behind whatever this is, and he’s trying to catch up but not quite succeeding. “Uh. Huh?”

“Alright! Run it is.” Akito decides, all the while looking exactly like he did last week when Junta from two floors down had turned up with the extra pizzas that got accidentally delivered to his bi-weekly Soc Society meetings. (Akito had crowed that it paid to know people in high places, and Hamada and him had stared at each other for a full minute before they burst into laughter at the absurdity of it all.)

So they do two rounds around the block in five minutes, sprinting to get ahead like it’s a race and one of them is going to get some kind of a medal.

“You were right, this was a good idea,” Akito heaves afterwards, breathing hard over his hands on his knees. Hamada matches his pants, off-timed breath for off-timed breath. Their shoes are wet from the puddles in the hollows of the field, and Hamada tracks the haphazard line of soil and torn grass on the back of Akito’s calves. Then, “If that second offer is still open, let me buy you dinner tonight. We could go some place nice.”

A flash of uncertainty passes across Akito’s face briefly, like a cloud across the sun and Hamada wants to pull him close and make use of the wet cold to make excuses for the proximity. Instead, he lets out a sound, high and happy in his throat. “Are you sure you’ll have enough for rent after that?”

Akito shrugs. He’s still two steps away, straightening up to look up at Hamada. “I’ve been saving up,” he says, and when Hamada bends to kiss the corner of his lips, Akito’s hand, still warm and damp from his run, slips into his.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> shige/kami, G: sort of office AU

“Paging Shigeoka Daiki, _PAGING SHIGEOKA DAIKI!_ Your husband’s here,” Kiriyama from the front desk announces, far too loud and too enthusiastically. The shit-eating grin in his voice is still completely apparent even through the weird staticky quality of the office PA system - because _of course_ he would. But Shige’s nothing less than a magnanimous human being and let’s be real here, a lovestruck newlywed, so he’s not exactly holding a grudge right now.

He stuffs his things into his bag; laptop, pens, and notebook (into all the wrong compartments), even as he’s reminding himself to take his time and his arms are rushing along at a superhuman speed. It’s not like he’s going to go down to an empty lobby if he’s a minute later than usual. But his heart is racing so fast Shige’s sure it’s going to burst through his chest in a moment.

“Kami-chan!” He calls once he strides out of the elevator. Shige doesn’t exactly hate his job, but this - this moment in his day makes it all worthwhile. He waves when he spots Kamiyama’s blond hair bobbing by the large potted plant in the plush lobby, resolutely ignoring the fact that Kiriyama’s currently making obnoxious puking noises. And resolutely NOT running across the polished floor towards Kamiyama even though his feet really want to.

“Oh, hey,” Kamiyama grins when he looks up, looking sufficiently wind-swept and wonderfully pink-cheeked from the cold. Shige could kiss him, but he doesn’t because he’s a professional. Not even when Kamiyama holds out his hand to take Shige’s laptop case from him, not even when he squeezes Shige’s fingers fleetingly when their knuckles brush and says, “ready to go?” like Shige hasn’t been counting down the minutes since stepping into the office this morning, or daydreaming of all the things they could do together in their new apartment during his lunch break while he willed time to pass faster.

“Yeah,” Shige replies, and he finds himself breathless for some stupid shoujo manga reason or another. He clears his throat and tries again, well-aware of the silly grin on his face, so broad it probably shows all his teeth. “I mean, yup!”

“Alright, so like - I was thinking of having dinner at that _gyuudon_ place you like? I feel like having meat - ” Kamiyama starts, walking close so his shoulder knocks into Shige’s arm. He feels warm and sweet beside him, falling into step. Behind them, Kiriyama is making hooting noises, but Shige sticks his tongue out at him, and curls his fingers into the sleeve of Kamiyama’s coat.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> akito-centric, G: author akito (for [clipsie](http://clipsie.livejournal.com/))

There is a corner of Akito’s room devoted to the poetry he’s read and loved. It’s not a huge collection, just four slim volumes of words that have struck him and occasionally made him cry on public transport. Sometimes when a manuscript has him stuck, this is where he reaches towards first. There’s a collection by Sagawa Chika, compiled after her death, her words tumbling off the page like the air in spring, weighed down by the scent of blooming flowers and freshly turned earth, rain on the wet pavement under his feet. It’s supposed to help; it mostly does but -

 “You’ve done it before,” Junta reminds him in late January, while he stirs limp French fries in a sad puddle of chili sauce. “We could even go to Kinokuniya right now to look at the Kiriyama bit of the shelf. I mean, you’ve done it exactly five times before. This is nothing new.” Logically, Akito knows Junta is right. But illogically, he just wants to erase everything he has on the new document he’s got labelled as _UGGGGGH_ on his laptop and lie down on their heated living room floor for two days.

 In February, a senior at the publishing company takes him out for dinner. “I hear you’ve started on something new,” Shigeaki says, his elbows on the edge of the table. He cocks his head to the right, looking so interested that Akito wishes he could describe the young world in his head, and say more past a lame _I guess, kind of?_ At the end of the night, he has a list of tips from Shigeaki whose was just on the morning news talking about his latest book, and a renewed sense of vigour. So then it’s down to Junta to find Akito asleep at his desk in the morning, and who has to peel his cheek away from the lines of his laptop’s keyboard.

Akito starts March with ten thousand words about a dude in Edo and a new rented desk space at the collective art building in on the fringes of downtown Osaka. The staircase that leads up to it is hidden down a narrow alley flanked by a bookstore and a coin laundry. Hamada, the guy who runs the place, meets him at the station. They walk past a shop selling _senbei_ , and old people chatting on plastic stools outside their usual haunts. “It’s been mostly serendipity,” Hamada says. Then “I painted that, took me three days,” gesturing at the colourful sign on the staircase landing. He’s pleased and proud in equal measure; Akito likes him immediately.

April: Akito eats too many homemade onigiri and drops too many grains of rice at his rental desk. Some of them solidify into starchy grains that he has to scrape off the laminated wood with a ruler at the end of every day. Between going cross-eyed from staring at the screen and scribbling out illegible plot notes, he gets to know the person sitting next to him. His desk partner is a graphic book artist in university, barely legal, who’s waiting for his big break. When Akito asks to see his work, Kotaki pulls up wonderfully expressive pages of light and space bathed in watercolour and ink. When he breathes out an awed wow, Kotaki preens then confesses sheepishly “actually I own all your books.”

It never matches up. In his head, his protagonist - Eizaburo - has grown up and learned the lessons he needs, but on paper, he’s still eighteen years old, fumbling and desperately unsure. So between writing and his part-time job at the coin laundry near his and Junta’s apartment in May, Akito people-watches with one of his high school juniors in some bid to “meet real normal people”. Ryusei is a man of few words, saving those he does say for important things like how Akito’s previous book could have been better with more focus on the old woman’s predicament. He sees things that other people don’t, and Akito’s always grateful when they can sit for hours, idly chatting about that attractive wardrobe staff who’d asked Ryusei out for coffee after a shoot, and all the embarrassing things he’d said during.

In June, Akito finds himself coming up with a ridiculous story about a little yuzu tree with Kotaki over lunch. They’re sat in the conbini down the road from the office space, licking at sweetened fruit popsicles with sticky tongues and teeth and laughing about something he doesn’t remember afterwards. Then unexpectedly, a detour in conversation and an idea for a children’s book. “Let’s do it!” Kotaki says, eyes lit, and Akito laughs.

“This is insane,” he says, as he pulls out a scrap of paper and a pen anyway.

It’s not exactly what Akito usually writes about - the life cycles of plants and seasonally fruits - nor how he usually does it. By July, Kotaki’s made unlikely alliances with Junta, switching sides during banter as if he’s a master at this; running rounds around Akito and Junta’s words until everyone is pink-cheeked and hiccuping from beer and laughter.

In August they’re talking seriously about publishing, and Akito thinks only briefly of the manuscript he’s left languishing in the depths of his hard drive. Every time he thinks about Eizaburo, a sickly guilt fills his chest, so he hasn’t, not for three weeks.

“I feel bad,” he tells Junta one night after Kotaki’s left. It just feels weird to a work hanging and moving on to something else in the meantime. Junta purses his lips for a moment while he fills a clean cup with water and nudges it across the kitchen counter towards Akito. He gulps it down obediently.

“Isn’t it better to wait till you’re sure you can do something well before you do it though? Like, you just finished a book last December and then you started this one and you’ve been fighting it every step of the way.” Akito watches the way Junta plays with the handle of his mug, always so thoughtful, always so wise. “You look like you love writing the picture book with Non-chan more,” and Akito glimpses a part of an epiphany.

Their manuscript is accepted in September, and by the end of November, every bookstore is advertising it as _Slice-of-life and period drama author Kiriyama Akito’s venture into a new genre!!_ Kotaki complains about the tiny print of his name in those staff recommendation cards, but his phone is also ringing with so many calls from magazines and light novelists that Hamada enforces a Kotaki Rule which involves no phones for one Kotaki Nozomu.

Junta buys copies of _Citrus Friends_ for their coffee table, rearranging part of the shelf with Akito’s books so the dark-coloured spines for his previous works is highlighted by the green and yellow spine of his latest.

In December, Shigeaki takes Akito out for dinner again.

“What happened to that guy from Edo?” He asks over dessert, leaning across the table as if he’s practically bursting to know.

Suddenly, Akito finds the sparse threads of that story lengthening like koi in his hands.


End file.
